Short Continuous Deployments To Production !

One of my product teams has been successful in deploying to production once every 4 weeks. In the past, our release plan would comprise of an Iterative and incremental development sprint zero, one or three working sprints, one or two alpha or beta sprints, and followed by a hardening sprint. 

We were essentially releasing features to end-users once in every six 8 or more. Our product features are critical to the business. 

Our product team migrated to a shorter release cycle thereby developing and deploying for each sprint and changed to following into 1 month cycle,

Benefits of Small Releases

As the iterative development process is mastered, the door opens for the team to deliver smaller and more frequent releases to the end-users, and that is one of the prime drivers of agile. The ability to release software more frequently has two primary business benefits: increased responsiveness to the customer amidst changing marketing conditions and reduced risk to the enterprise.

1. Frequent deployments to end-user provide a competitive advantage.
2. Product requirements could change significantly if deployed to production once every few months. By launching frequently, you could gather data from end-users earlier and apply adjustments accordingly.
3. Keep your team energized and motivated.
4. Helps in establishing best practices.
5. Exposes risks and challenges with design, architecture, and solutions earlier in the process.